Not The Best Night
by Corvus corone
Summary: The Dangerous Abilities have been sent out on yet another mission. Unfortunately, things don't go completely as planned. Tono is annoyed, Rui is happy, Hayate doesn't really care and Natsume is smirking. Includes a little slash and some Portal references.


**Not The Best Night**

_written for Suivre le Stylo  
with great thanks to lylilyl_

XXX

It was cold and dark and Tono was annoyed.

There were quite a few reasons for this. For one thing, it was cold and dark, as we already knew. For another, he was on yet another of those torturous missions the Academy liked to send him on, no matter how loud his protests of not belonging to the Dangerous Ability class were. Sneaking around a disused laboratory in the middle of nowhere was not Tono's idea of fun, especially with those kids from the DA class. And Rui was flirting with him.

Now, normally, Tono did not mind people flirting with him, under the condition that they were female. It might have made the whole mission experience slightly more fun than usual. However, Rui was not a girl, however pretty his hair was today. And there was something about Rui (his shamelessness? His utter annoyingness?) – not just the fact that he was a guy hitting on him - that made Tono uncomfortable, like he was the one being taken advantage of. It was usually the other way around.

(Besides, Tono knew his own hair looked better.)

"Rui, shut up," grumbled Natsume from behind them.

Tono looked around in relief. "Thank you, Natsume," he said with a dirty look at Rui. "At least _someone's_ speaking some sense here."

"Seriously, shut up," said Natsume, glaring at them both. "We're almost there."

"And as much as I want you both to get caught so you can stop annoying us, that might make the rest of the mission difficult," continued Hayate.

"That's not very nice," said Rui, poking Hayate.

There was a small spark and then Rui and Hayate both jumped backwards, rubbing their now slightly singed arms.

"I said, shut up!" Natsume said. "Look."

"I guess this is the place then, huh?" said Tono, looking up at the large sign over the door they had come too. "'Aperture Science'?"

Natsume grunted, and started work on the lock. Tono sighed. Why did it feel like Natsume was leading them? This always happened. Tono was sent out to lead a team, and then Natsume always took over, somehow. Anyway, Tono was the oldest...

"Can you get your ass over here and help?" said Natsume, interrupting his thoughts.

He thought he heard Hayate snigger. "Coming," said Tono. "Rui, stop it!"

"Can't you ogle the cute guys some other time?" said Hayate, slapping him. "Just sit down, and stop being a pain."

"Spoilsports," muttered Rui. "You know I can't help with that lock, so I'm not exactly wasting time!"

Tono, who was helping Natsume by Amplifying his Alice so he could melt or burn or destroy or otherwise get through the door, said, "You're distracting me, therefore, wasting time."

"Think of it as a compliment!" said Rui, grinning at him.

"Screw you," said Tono, glaring back. "Why don't you annoy someone else for a change?" he muttered.

"He's already done that too much," explained Hayate.

"Done," said Natsume before Rui could say anything, and kicked the door open. He stepped in, and stopped. "Are you guys coming or what? Do I have to do _everything_ myself?"

The other three followed in various states of happiness. Rui put a hand on Tono's shoulder, who shrugged it off and hurriedly caught up with Natsume.

"What is this dump?" said Hayate, after a few seconds had passed. "Can't see why the Academy thinks it's so important."

"Doesn't matter," said Natsume, kicking a fallen garbage can. "Just do what we planned, okay? I want to get some sleep tonight after this is done with."

"Come on, no CCTV? This is pathetic," Hayate said. "I don't see the point in all of us coming. There'd better be some action soon or I'm going to fall asleep."

"Suit yourself," said Natsume. "This way."

They turned a corner and came face to face with a spotlight. Tono swore.

"Intruders in Base A!" shouted a voice much too close to Tono's head for comfort – as always, he found himself wishing that he had a less useless combat Alice. Instead he settled for ducking and covering his head, hoping that the other three would do something helpful.

There was a lot of shouting, even more cursing and something hot and so bright he could see it through clenched eyelids flew over Tono's head. Then, seemingly in a matter of seconds, it was over. He took his arms off his head and opened his eyes.

"Are you okay?" Rui asked him.

"Uh… I think so," Tono said. He looked around. Natsume was grumpily rubbing a bruised arm and Hayate was scanning the doorways for more guards.

"Lucky to see _you_ didn't get hurt," Natsume said when he saw Tono looking. "How long do you think those guys will be before they bring their friends? We'd better get going."

"I blinded them both," said Rui cheerfully. "They'll take their time trying to find their way back."

"When you say, 'get going', which way do you want to get going in?" said Hayate, pointing at the three doors in front of them.

"Don't we have a map?" said Tono.

"Well…" Hayate said. "That is, I mean, I don't think…"

"Didn't you memorise that drawing Persona gave us?" said Tono.

"Didn't _you_?"

"Can't remember which door, though. I swear this wasn't on there! Any of you remember?"

Natsume looked ready to murder someone. Rui looked strangely cheerful, possibly because of Natsume's annoyance. He seemed to live off the annoyances of others.

"What do you recommend, oh great leader?" Hayate said to Natsume. "And don't tell me you didn't memorise that map either, you hardy veteran of the dreadful missions…"

"Shut your face," growled Natsume, and Hayate and Rui grinned. "We'll split up," Natsume continued. "Only one of us needs to get to those papers. Safe enough for you?"

"That's what I was going to say," said Tono in a grouchy undertone as the others nodded their consent. Why was Natsume the automatic leader anyway?

"There there," said Rui with the hint of a laugh. "How about I go with you?"

"No!" Tono said, looking horrified. "I'll…"

"Well, Natsume can handle things fine without any Amplification, and same with me," said Hayate. "'Course, Rui isn't as Unlimited as we are, so…"

"Great. Absolutely fucking great," muttered Tono.

"Cheer up! It'll be _fun_," said Rui, in a tone of voice much too flirtatiously evil for Tono's liking.

"Bye!" called Hayate as he went through the further doorway. Tono could hear him sniggering.

Natsume slouched through the middle doorway with a flame in his hand, and didn't spare them any more than a grunt as he left. Tono sighed. Then he followed Rui into the last door left.

"Are-" said Rui after half a minute had gone by without attack or conversation.

"Shut up," said Tono. There was a silence. Rui looked slightly hurt.

"Wha-"

"Shut up."

"Why-"

"Shut up," Tono said. He wondered how long he could do this for before Rui lost patience and started cursing him, and then wondered if being cursed was preferable to being creeped out. Hard to say, really.

"Fine!"

"How much do your curses hurt?" he asked absentmindedly after they had gone a few more metres.

"D'you want to find out?" said Rui, sounding delighted that Tono was talking to him.

"Er… no."

"So why did you ask?"

"Because… forget it. Shut up," added Tono in case Rui started annoying him again.

"That's just rude."

Tono didn't bother replying.

"Have you seen Tsubasa around recently?" Rui said after another half a minute.

Tono looked at him. "Isn't he avoiding you because you keep molesting him?"

"Well, that's not very nice!" Rui said with a flick of his hair. "I haven't seen him for ages…"

"Probably a good thing," muttered Tono.

"I heard that!"

"So?"

"Well, you're like best friends with him, so you probably see him loads…"

"I'm not _that_ good friends with him," Tono said, thinking of the many times that Tsubasa had punched, kicked, beaten, run away from, hit and bashed him. "Just because I was being _nice_ to his girlfriend…"

"He has a _girlfriend_?!" Rui said, stopping.

Tono stopped too, poked him hard in the back and said, "Hey keep moving! Okay, she's not really his girlfriend but they're very good friends."

"Oh," said Rui, sounding a bit depressed. "Who is she?"

"Do you know Misaki Harada?"

"What, _her_? I am so much prettier than she is! And I have better hair! What kind of taste does that guy have?!"

"A taste for, um, _girls_?"

"Well, _fine_. Sod him."

"If you like Tsubasa so much, then why do you keep doing stuff to me?"

"You're kinda hot too," said Rui without even so much as a pause.

Tono screwed up his eyes and said, "I really shouldn't have asked, should I? As flattering as that is," he added in an undertone.

"See, you like it!" Rui said, turning around and looking at Tono straight in the eyes. Tono had to look away. There it was again – that distinct feeling of being taken advantage of, of things being Not Quite Right.

"Piss off," Tono said when he realised that he had to say something or otherwise it might seem that Rui really was getting to him. Rui giggled.

"You know, you started it…" he said.

"What?! How?! No, that seriously doesn't work."

"Don't you remember? Back in those good old days, when you first came to the school, you wer-"

Tono put his hands over his ears and said, "Okay alright yes I do remember don't say it and please for godsakes shut up _now_."

A few silent minutes later (punctuated by a few mutterings of "shut up" and Rui's giggles), they had finally reached the end of the corridor. In front of them stood a rather battered door covered in graffiti.

"Right way or wrong way?" said Tono. He held up the torch he was holding in an attempt to read the label on this door – however, the sheer amount of scribbles and spray paint that covered it made it quite hard to see.

"The cake is a lie," read Rui.

"That can't be the room name," Tono said, shoving him over. "Stop reading the graffiti, moron."

"The graffiti is so much more interesting," Rui said. He sat down on the floor while Tono tried to pick the lock.

"Anyway, it looks like we're on the right track. Looks like this room is meant to be 'Department of Shower Curtain Researches Plc.'"

"Which is… good?"

"You Dangerous Ability people are meant to be experts at this! Yes, this _is_ what we are looking for." He continued his work on the lock.

"You really have no idea how to do it, do you?" said Rui over his shoulder. Tono jumped. He had not heard Rui getting up.

"… no," he muttered. "Do you?"

"No," Rui said, still managing to sound rather positive about that fact.

"So we're just going to have to sit here and do nothing _even though_ we've found the right place?"

"We could do that… or… we could use these keys I got from those guards back there!"

Tono stared at the jangly pieces of metal that Rui was brandishing. "And… what about Natsume and Hayate?"

"I'm sure they can pick locks," Rui said with an airy hand wave. "Are we going in?"

Tono shrugged and Rui unlocked the door. It swung open to reveal a room even darker than the corridor –a blinking red light in a far corner was the only illumination. A musty smell was carried on the curl of air that followed the door; Tono wrinkled his nose.

"If you can stand the stink of your cigarettes then this is nothing," said Rui as he walked in, taking Tono's torch from his hand as he did so.

Going into a dark and smelly room without looking might not have been the best idea. Tono looked on, a little stunned, as a siren immediately starting wailing and a bright pulsing red light turned on. Rui looked around.

"Guards? No? Akira, come on!" said Rui, a cloud of curses swarming in his hand just in case.

"Don't call me that!" Tono snapped.

"Well, it _is_ your name…"

Tono glared at him. "Keep moving, alright?"

Rui complied, and seeing that still no guards had appeared, Tono thought it safe enough to carry on with their mission. They had only gotten across half the rather large room before Tono heard voices from the corridor they had arrived by – voices that, somehow, were carried above the noise of the alarm.

"Better deal with them now," said Rui, turning around. "First one through that door gets it!" he said happily as a black cloud materialised in the doorway. Tono felt a small tug in his chest as the curse was Amplified. Then he got down behind a table in case anything serious happened, again feeling just that little bit useless.

Just as expected, the first guard through ran straight into the curse cloud and fell over with a shout of pain as Rui tightened the curse. The two others behind him continued on into the room, and were only stopped when they ran into two more clouds of darkness that had been hurriedly set up for them.

"This is fun," said Rui as he pulled Tono up (taking his time in feeling up his arm). "Shall we continue?"

"Wait," said Tono. The alarm had turned off, and he could hear something else, something on the other side of the room. "Can you hear that?"

Rui listened for a while, and then said, "More guards?"

It didn't sound like more guards, though. More like one slightly deranged person rambling.

"… and you know what? There was even going to be a party for you. A big party, and all your friends were invited. I even invited your best friend, your pet tomato, but she couldn't come because you ate her. All your other friends couldn't come either, because you don't HAVE any other friends. Of course, it-"

"Shut the fucking hell up," said another more familiar voice.

"Natsume?" said Tono, rather worried. "Is he next door?"

"Ha, loser."

"We'd better check." Without further ado he crossed the room, opened the next door and saw a small crowd of people. And yes, there was Natsume sitting (slouching) on the floor in the middle of it all. He closed the door again, hoping that no-one had seen him.

"Why'd you close the door for?" said Rui.

"Er…"

Rui opened it again. Natsume looked up this time and Tono, watching over Rui's arm, clearly saw him rolling his eyes. The man standing in front of him was not amused.

"Are you rolling _your eyes_ at me?" he said, glaring down at Natsume. "I'll teach you to-"

"Shut it," growled Natsume. "Are you going to capture me or what?"

"Why isn't he using his Alice?" said Rui.

"Some guy in there's got a Barrier Alice up," Tono said, trying not to amplify it. "Hii-sama sure has a lot of relatives…"

"Working in a shower curtain research station? That's just sad."

"Be quiet," said Tono. "I mean, shut up. Whatever."

Rui laughed (quietly), looked at Tono (who realised that he was much too close to Rui's face for comfort and hastily stepped back) and said, "Maybe we should rescue him. He looks so sad when he can't do anything…"

"And… how exactly are _we_ going to rescue him?"

"Distract them?" said Rui after a while, during which Natsume glared into the distance as if trying to telepathically shout "DO SOMETHING YOU MORONS AND HURRY THE FUCK UP!" into Tono and Rui's heads, and the craziest-looking guy in the Natsume-torture group started on another mad ramble. Tono thought it might have been about cake. It was hard to tell.

"Well, if they _still_ haven't noticed us over here in the doorway, then I'm betting they're going to be pretty hard to distract…"

"I've got it!" said Rui, and enthusiastically waved at Natsume in a gesture of 'look over here!' Then he pulled Tono into the crazy-people-filled room.

"What th-" He had been about to say something along the lines of "What the hell do you think you're doing?" but he couldn't, because Rui had grabbed his head in an iron-tight grip and was kissing him. Very passionately.

"Hey look!" he heard Natsume shouting, as if from a far off distance. "Lesbians!"

"What in the name of holy Gordon Freeman is he-" started one of the men, but stopped short when he noticed the intrusion.

Well, that was probably a good enough distraction for the Barrier-holding man, thought a small part of Tono's brain. Another small part wanted to beat Natsume up for calling him a girl. Most of the rest of his brain was battling it out between either fighting Rui off (which would be the sensible option, except then maybe the Barrier Alice guy wouldn't be distracted enough and then Natsume wouldn't be able to do his thing and then he would have been kiss-raped for nothing), kissing Rui back (as helpful as that might be for Natsume and the mission, he still had _some_ pride… although maybe not very much) or just peacefully enduring it. Which he was doing. Apart from that fact that he was sort of mumbling, "Get off get off get off!" into Rui's mouth. So maybe not that peaceful then.

While these rather confused thoughts were running through Tono's head, Natsume had managed to set the Barrier Alice holder on fire as well as scaring off the rest of the men. Now he was just sniggering.

Tono kicked Rui in the shin, heard Rui make some sort of injured squeak, and managed to free himself. He wiped his mouth and said in an effort to restore some of his lost dignity, "What were those guys talking about?"

"No idea," said Natsume. He was still smirking.

"At least Natsume enjoyed it," said Rui, grinning wider than Tono had ever thought possible for a human being. "Didn't you, Akira?"

"Don't talk to me please," muttered Tono. "Uh… where's Hayate?"

"Probably got lost or something," said Natsume, shrugging. "Just think… those men will never know that you're not _really_ a girl… actually, maybe you'd prefer that. Lesbian or gay? What would you prefer?"

"Fuck off," Tono said. He needed a cigarette. Now. The only reason Natsume was not currently beaten unconscious and in a dumpster right now was because of the warning flame he was toying with in his hand.

"Aw, don't argue," said Rui, patting (or rather, stroking) him on the back. Tono slapped his hand off. "Hey, did you manage to get those papers before those weirdos caught you?" he said to Natsume.

"Yeah," said Natsume, pointing to a pile of ash on the floor. "Mission completed. Someone call Hayate and tell him that we can get the hell out of here."

"Why don't you?" Tono said irritably. Natsume glared at him, but did so.

"You know you liked it," said Rui while Natsume was waiting for Hayate to pick up. "Come on, admit it!"

"Admit _what_? And how could I enjoy _that_?!"

"Oh, well, you must admit that you think I'm pretty, otherwise you wouldn't have started hitting on me when you first came-"

"That," said Tono, quietly because Natsume was making angry gestures to keep the noise down, "was an honest mistake!"

"But you still _liked_ me," said Rui, unperturbed. "Which means you thought I was pretty. See?"

"Pretty if you were a _girl_. Which was the only reason, okay?"

"And?"

"And what?"

"You would go out with me if I was a girl?"

Tono closed his eyes. How had it got to this? "No! I'm just saying that, if you were a girl, then yes, maybe I would hit on you, but otherwise _no_."

"Not just maybe, you were _totally_ flirting with me. If only Subaru Imai hadn't had to walk past at that very moment…"

"I'm incredibly thankful for that!" Tono snapped. He didn't really want to think about what might have happened otherwise.

"You should be more adventurous! Just because I happen not to have a vagina is no excuse not to be interested in me!" said Rui, walking towards him with a scarily determined look on his face. Tono backed away instinctively. Unfortunately, there was a wall directly behind him.

"Really, it is. A very good reason."

"You're no fun…" Rui was much too close and also holding up a hand ready to curse him in case he tried to escape. Tono closed his eyes again, his skin prickling. The world seemed slightly less intimidating when he couldn't see his doom approaching. Doom, in this case, meant another round of testing Rui's making out abilities. Or something along those lines. He sincerely hoped that Rui wouldn't try anything more terrifying, like groping him. And then that thought horrified him even more, making him wish that he'd never thought of that. He could feel Rui's breath on his face, discomfortingly tickling his lips.

Tono had reached the point of maximum mental preparation for whatever was going to come next, when... well, nothing happened. The close presence that had been just _there _a moment ago moved away, and the gust of cool air that followed it gave the game away to Tono. He opened his eyes, confused. Rui had stepped back, seemingly distracted by something else. An odd feeling of disappointment and relief swept through Tono's stomach.

"Get a room!" said Hayate, laughing. "Guys, are we going or what?"

"Sure," said Natsume, smirking.

This was _exactly _why Tono hated missions.

XXX

_A/N: Okay, I wrote this at the same time as I was playing Pokemon Emerald (if you wanted to know, my trainer is a boy called Hooker and his main six Pokemon are Slutter, Hootenanny, Trasher, Araminta (the male Linoone), Stripper and Ooooooooo.). So if it is not very good - I fail completely at multitasking - you can blame it on that. Tono/Rui is now my second favourite pairing. Sorry, Sumire/Koko fans._

_What happens next?  
_


End file.
